The public health movement has saved more lives than all of the medicines ever produced.
It is wrong to take that successful model and pervet it to persue nanny state goals. So you tell me that something good is being twisted and used by bad people. That does not mean that public health is the same thing as thing they arey trying to make it. It does not mean that the goals are same as the goals of those trying to pervet it.
The CDC needs a good fumigation, no doubt about that, but the rats in the CDC showed up after the major battles were won and the rank and file are still out there tracking disease.
There's no doubt that clean water, for example, has saved millions, possibly billions.
I just don't see a way to keep the rats out of the storehouse in this case. It's where they hang out. It's why robbers hold up banks. Where the money is.
My concern, from an R&D perspective is this:
Over the course of my life I've had FIVE (count them, FIVE) Rubella vaccinations. Four between 1984 and 1998 for one reason or another. Starting college, losing records and getting one just to have that record again, getting a tetanus vax at the college health clinic due to puncture wound accident (stepped on nail, ouch!) and getting a Rubella booster, 'just to be sure'. etc.
In 2003 I got serious about trying to have a baby and my OB insisted on a titer, just to be sure. Actually, it was *her* idea, I thought she was just looking to waste my deductible and my insurance company's money. I've had LOTS of them, WHY are we wasting my time with this??? She, thankfully, insisted.
Guess what. NO rubella titer. ZERO.
(Maybe that SIXTH booster would do the trick?)(I'm not alone I find out, there's a good reason my OB checks routinely now...)
I was left with some uncomfortable conclusions. IF I were infected during pregnancy the treatment would be exactly the same as it was before the vax was developed. Abortion or delivery of seriously deformed baby.
In order to assure this didn't happen to my 'inferior' immune system I must rely on 'herd immunity'. Which means forcing everyone *else* to have that vaccination. I'm not comfortable with that either. It's a rather objectionable vaccine, being made from a cell line derived from an abortion. Some people have genuine religious objections to this. Does my need to feel safe override their genuine objections to this? I don't think so.
Where does my 'need to feel safe and have government force something on them' end? It sounded like my NE liberal coworkers arguments against the availability of guns. They wanted them collected, house to house, by FORCE if necessary. Because the mere presence of guns made them FEEL unsafe.
Why no Plan B with rubella infection? Why is it, in the past FIFTY YEARS, we still know very little more about HOW rubella actually infects and does its dirty deeds than we did before there was a vaccine?
In this case, public health seems to be all 'Plan A' and no 'Plan B' at all. In fact, lack of 'Plan B' seems to be used as a fear factor to ensure maximum uptake of 'Plan A'. And I found that merely questioning the lack of 'Plan B' will mark one as some sort of antivaccine heretic. Or something. Yes, clearly, that's me. I looked like a pincushion in the 1990's. Clearly I'm antivaccine.
And, due to to overabundance of trust in 'Plan A', research since the vaccines for 'serious' diseases that killed/maimed large numbers of children were developed has not happened. Instead of using that time/money to figure OUT the diseases in question (just in case the vaccine strains mutate around the ones in use (pertussis is doing this, CDC is watching this closely, ditto mumps as well)) so we can TREAT them instead of just shotgunning 'Plan A' over 300m people. And, use that information to decipher the other bad guys (ebola, 1918 flu, others), we're chasing ever and smaller epidemiological impacts (HPV/Cervical cancer). It would appear that *all* public health initiatives lead to vaccination of some sort. Diseases, addictions, obesity, you name it.
As I said, I'm cynical by nature having had many years experience in the back end of the business.
'Plan A', by force if necessary makes more money for those lucky enough to be in on the game (private and public)(NIH owns the patent for the 'virus like particle' technology used in Gardasil, were their approval and opinions on Gardasil really unbiased? IIRC they get $3/shot. Lots of shots mean lots of money...they stand to benefit, immensely if it becomes mandatory under obamacare) and reinforces statist tendencies. Both sides of the equation of bad guys win. Instead of finding how to *treat* the flu (and possibly all or most flu virus variations) it's MUCH more profitable to just scare 300m people into getting a $30 shot. Every year.
--BA, the cynic.
Joy. Bliss. Only imagine had this actually gotten released. A little bird in the industry tells me it was only random chance this particular batch was 'tested' to begin with.